Scots in the Sub-Arctic: Third Annual St. Andrew's Society of Toronto Lecture

On January 15, 2014 in MacKinnon room 132, beginning at 11a.m., the Scottish Studies program presents the Third Annual St. Andrew's Society of Toronto Lecture entitled: "Scots in the Sub-Arctic: Musical Exchanges with the James Bay Cree." Fiddle music and dancing form a major component of the social lives of the Cree population living in the James Bay region of sub-Arctic Canada. The instrument and much of its associated repertoire were first introduced to James Bay by British fur traders employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), who travelled to the region from the late seventeenth until the twentieth century. Based on archive research and ongoing fieldwork in the region since 2011, the aim of this paper is to explore this transatlantic musical migration from Scotland to James Bay and the re-shaping and re-formation of Scottish fiddle music and dance through indigenisation into Cree culture. It will be illustrated with the use of photographs, video, and audio from recent field recordings and interviews.

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